Houston's real estate market hasn't avoided the slowdown triggered by collapsing oil prices, but a more diverse economy will help offset weakness in housing and vacancies in area office towers, industry experts said Tuesday.

"We're getting back to average growth versus ridiculously great growth," said Mollie Carmichael, principal of John Burns Real Estate Consulting, who moderated a panel discussion for members of the Urban Land Institute.

The message from the panel was blunt but not overly dismal.

"Clearly this is a big deal," Sean Suffel of the Transwestern commercial real estate firm said, "but when people try to tie this back to the '80s, I don't agree."

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The west-side office market is taking the brunt of the blow from slumping crude prices as energy companies have stopped expanding and are giving back some of the space they needed during the boom.

Three years ago the vacancy rate for high-end office space in the Energy Corridor was 3 percent and there were only two blocks of space with more than 50,000 square feet on the market, Suffel said. Today, vacancy is 18 percent, including sublease space, and there are more than 20 available blocks of space with more than 50,000 square feet, he said.

"If you're a tenant of reasonable size, you have a lot of leverage out there," Suffel said.

"Concessions are getting dramatic, especially for new construction," he added.

Ricardo Rivas of Allied Orion Group, a multifamily firm, said west Houston's apartment market has been relatively stable, but there are 3,000 units under construction with more proposed.

Big growth in Baytown

Across town, however, Baytown is "on fire," Rivas said. Apartments there have seen 13 percent rent growth year over year.

Overall, the multifamily market has peaked, Rivas said, and over the next few years "will be going back to normal."

Jim Jenkins, vice president of master-planned communities for Toll Brothers, said there are opportunities for growth in active-adult communities and inner city development. The company is building luxury homes in Somerset Green, a guard-gated community west of the Heights.

Carmichael said there could be a slight oversupply of homes in certain pockets, and sales and prices will soften, particularly in the higher end of the market where much of the recent growth came from.

"We're producing a few more homes than we are jobs," she said.

Over the next few years housing prices will continue to rise in Houston, but at more moderate levels than what the area saw in recent years, according to the Burns Home Value Index.

House prices ' up there'

Affordability will continue to be an issue for many Houstonians who want to own a home but can't pay the higher prices.

"Homes are getting to price points that are pretty up there," said Carmichael, adding that demand will grow for entry-level homes.

Suffel said there's too much uncertainty in the energy industry to pinpoint when the market will bounce back, but the real estate industry is relatively healthy compared to previous downturns.

In the mid-1980s, he said, developers built more than 72 million square feet of office and most of it was developed without tenants. Today, some 24.5 million square feet are under way, at least half of it already spoken for. Plus, the overall market is much larger.

Jenkins said volatility from the energy industry is just part of doing business in Houston.